The New York Times has announced a committee of 20 staff members and two outside news executives to review newsroom policies after the Jayson Blair scandal.

The Times yesterday named retiring Associated Press President and CEO Louis D Boccardi and Joann Byrd, outgoing Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial page editor, to the committee.

The committee, headed by the Times' Assistant Managing Editor Allan M Siegal, "will conduct a comprehensive review" of the Times' newsroom policies "in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair episode", according to a memo to the newspaper's staff.

"The committee's charge is to determine when, where, how and why our newsroom's culture, organisational processes and actions led to a failure of our journalism," the memo said.

Blair, a reporter, resigned from the Times on May 1 after the newspaper found fraud, plagiarism and inaccuracies in 36 of 73 articles written between October and April that it examined.");document.write("

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A third non-Times member may be added, the memo said, and the outside members will "serve as our sounding board and reality check: We want to be told forcefully if we are going too easy on ourselves".

Tentative topics include hiring practices, recruiting and career tracking; the editorial process, including detecting and preventing errors; ethical concerns, such as the use of unidentified sources; and whether the Times should hire an ombudsman.